Ever since my first real cellphone, I have been an Apple fanboy. I started out with an iPhone 4S, and I was immediately hooked.
When compared with an Android phone of similar specs, I always found the iPhone to be a more intuitive and better put- together machine.
For a good while there, I felt like Apple could do no wrong, but then it did the unthinkable. It removed the headphone jack from the iPhone 7.
At the time of the great headphone jack disappearance, I still had an iPhone 6S, and I was perfectly content with that device.
Why would I want to upgrade to a device that didn’t have the same features that my favorite phone ever had? I could take any one of my numerous pairs of nice headphones and they would work right out of the gate.
No dongles required. For this very reason, I kept that 6S longer than I had ever kept a phone before.
I dealt with a battery that wanted to plummet to zero seconds after I unplugged it and a processor that probably couldn’t beat my grandma’s computer that runs Windows 95 in a race for months, just trying to hold onto my headphone jack a little while longer.
Sadly, the day came when I had to upgrade to something that could more reliably hold a charge.
If I was ever stranded somewhere by myself, a phone that died before lunchtime after being charged all night wasn’t going to do me any favors.
In the interest of keeping cost to a minimum, I decided on the iPhone 8, which Apple was kind enough to ship with a headphone dongle.
I had this dongle for about a week and then I lost it somewhere.
No problem, I thought, I’ll just go to the store and pick up a new one. Except it was $10 a pop for this small piece of wire that before I lost it was already starting to fray.
It is just ridiculous. I have a pair of Bose over-the-ear headphones that I have had for years and still work great that are essentially useless to me for on the go if I don’t have my dongle with me.
And at $10 each, I can’t easily get multiple adapters for my different pairs of headphones without breaking the bank.
With all this frustration in mind, it was obvious to me what I wanted this year for Christmas: a pair of wireless headphones.
I already had a set of JBL over-the-ear bluetooth headphones that I received the previous year for Christmas, but these squeezed my ears and never sat on my head right, so I barely used them.
I wanted something that I could take around with me in my pocket like AirPods, but without having my family spend the AirPod prices.
Even if I wanted AirPods, they wouldn’t have worked out any better than the JBLs; for the life of me I cannot get AirPods to stay in my ears, and I was interested in maybe using these headphones for when I exercise once in a blue moon.
I settled on the new RayCon E25s, a cost-effective and high-quality alternative to AirPods. I have absolutely fallen in love with these earbuds, and thanks to their rubber ear knub things, they stay in my ear without fail. I literally have never had them fall out.
I’m finally back to listening to music and podcasts on my way to class without having to deal with a dongle, and I cannot express how happy I am about that.

BENJAMIN HAYLETT
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